Monthly Archives: September 2013

THEN: Sometime between early December 1906 and mid-February 1907 an unnamed photographer with her or his back about two lots north of Pike Street recorded landmarks on the east side of Third Avenue including, in part, the Washington Bar stables, on the right; the Union Stables at the center, a church converted for theatre at Pine Street, and north of Pine up a snow-dusted Denny Hill, the Washington Hotel. (Used courtesy of Dan Kerlee )

NOW: Within six years following the completion of regrading on Third Ave as far north as Pine Street and Denny Hill in the spring of 1905, the hill was removed and the avenue graded and paved as far north as Denny Way.

In an effort to pack his namesake Taylor’s Castle Garden for opening night, Charles A. Taylor, Seattle’s then popular producer of farce and melodrama, paused to boast before the local press. Taylor explained that the seven days required to transform the recent home for the Methodist Protestant Church into his “amusement resort” as well as rehearse the new acts for his show and advertise them too, “that no such time record has hitherto been made in the country.” With his claim the popular playwright-performer added theatre statistician to his by then sixteen years with the Third Ave. Theatre. Whatever, the promoter’s figures worked. The Times review of the Dec. 1, 1906 opening revealed that for Taylor’s program of “extravaganza and vaudeville, with few exceptions every seat in the big playhouse was filled.” [Although not easy to read we will attach a clipping of this review at the bottom of this feature.]

The opportunity of turning the church at the southeast corner of Pine Street and Third Avenue into a sensational stage first opened to Taylor’s company when Seattle’s second oldest congregation moved out. Facing a street regrade that would leave the Gothic-arched entrance into their sanctuary no longer at the sidewalk but rather one floor up, the Methodists moved to a new stone church – still Gothic – on Capitol Hill.

1905 Sanborn real estate map showing the footprints for structures including those then short-lived ones on the east side of Third Ave. between Pike and Pine Streets.

For opening night the opportunist Taylor staged exhibits and sideshows in the new street-level first floor, while about 12 feet up he directed the “spectacular ‘Children’s Fairyland’ with a chorus of singers and dancers numbering more than 100”, all of it supported by the “difficult dancing” of Linnie Love, a “well-known Seattle girl” with her own stage name.

Another of the Third Ave. Theatre at it original home on the northeast corner of 3rd Ave. and Madison Street.

The corner’s rapid conversion from Gothic-sacred to Castle-secular was both ironic and short-lived. First the irony: Taylor and his players had been earlier forced into their 6-block move up Third Ave from Madison to Pine, when their long-accustomed venue, the Third Avenue Theatre at the northeast corner of Madison Street, was schedule for conversion into kindling by another regrade on Third Avenue. The return to melodrama – after some managerial squabbling with one of his supporters, Taylor’s Castle at 3rd and Pine closed, and flipped to being a stage for farce and melodrama. The name it had abandoned months earlier with the splinters at the northeast corner of Madison and Third was then moved north to Pine Street and used again.

A clip addressing Taylor’s difficulties as at least in part the result of acute bad health. May be and maybe not.Somewhat late in its stay in the converted church at 3rd and Pine. The razing of Denny Hill’s front hump aka South Summit between Pine and Virginia Streets, is well underway.

For two years more, it was as the Third Ave. Theatre that shows were put up in the not-so-old church (1891), while north across Pine Street, Denny Hill came down, and another “castle,” the landmark Washington Hotel, revealed here (on top) in part far left, with it.

Later that year (1907) a remnant of the hotel, and the new Fire Station on the right.The Seattle Times review of the Castle Garden’s opening, printed in the Dec. 2, 1906 edition. This is not easy to read even in the original.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, Paul?

Sure Jean 1, 2, 3.

1. I just returned from a Salmon House dinner with our blog’s distinguished anatomist, John Sundsten. (With a KEY WORD search on Sundsten the reader may visit again a few of John’s instructions in the coincidences of human anatomy, Green Lake morphology and walkers.) It is now 8 pm on Sat. Sept 28th, I’m listening to a Swedish male chorus singing all Schubert with the soprano Malena Ernman (a search for her on YouTube may surprise.) It is a mere month from another passage that may have numerological resonance for almost anyone. It will be my 75th birthday. [Here’s the proof – perhaps. Subtract 66 from 75 for 9, divide 9 by 3 for 3.] With different knees, and a new left hip, I might close my eyes and with the singing of Schubert and Marlena imagine myself 25. [Subtract 16 from 25 for 9, divide 9 by 3 and so on.]

Malena Ernman, the often comedic Swedish mezzo-soprano with shoulders as impressive as her range.

2. Ron Edge has gathered the past blog features that are most relevant to this Seattle block on 3rd Ave. between Pike and Pine streets. It turns out that it has been a popular popular with us. He has put up three links – the first three photos to follow – that will take the reader to his choices.

3. Finally below Ron’s trio, I’ll enter a few more related pieces of ephemera and their stories. [Shucks! I am up and it is Sunday, but all that I did for the blog under this “no. 3″ is not there. It did not take. Before reviving or restoring it we will need to figures out what sent it packing. Later then.]

Looking north on 3rd Ave. with his back near University Street, LaRoche captures on the center horizon the looming haze-shrouded mass of the Denny Hill Landmark, yet unopened and still named Denny Hotel, in the early 1890s. This was one of many LaRoche photographs that were gathered in an album for the developer Luther Griffith. The LaRoche that follows the attached story was another.

Luther Griffith from Argosy’s 1904 collection of caricatures of Seattle VIP men – only.LaRoche’s panorama of the city ca. 1890 taken from the still developing Denny Hill site of the Denny Hotel. (Courtesy, Special Collections, U.W. Libraries)Denny Hill was lowered about 100 feet (its southern summit) at the former footprint of the short-lived Denny Hotel. Here Jean has compromised for his “now” going as high as the parking lot on the east side of 3rd would allow – but still lower than the hill – and a few feet east of the prospect taken by LaRoche.A published stereo dated 1904 and taken nearer to Jean’s prospect when considered not for elevation but the east-west figuring of it all, and still somewhere near the front door of the by then renamed Washington Hotel. Note the one-block-long counterbalance that carried guests to the hotel up from Pine Street.Looking north on 3rd from the rear of the Denny/Washington Hotel. This pan is made from two negatives that while not perfectly fit make together a very rare and impressive look at the neighborhood established ca. 1903 on top of Denny Hill. The photograph shows the back or northern summit of the hill, but was photographed from the hotel on the slightly lower front (southern) summit. Virginia Street is out of frame below the pan.Looking south on 3rd Ave. with the photographer’s back to Lenora Street. Third is being prepared here for brick paving. At the center is the new Fire Station. This looks back thru the foreground of the 3rd Ave. subject printed directly above this one. This dates from ca. 1910.

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FOLLOWS NOW FOUR LOOKS to the SOUTHEAST and “Our Block” on THIRD between Pike and Pine. The first two were taken from Denny Hill. The second two from the Washington Hotel.

Part of a three-part pan of the city dated 1885, it includes, bottom-left, the Swedish Lutheran Church on the east side of 3rd Ave., second lot north from Pike Street. The territorial university is on its knoll (Denny’s Knoll). . . too. Beacon Hill makes a horizon upper-right, and First Hill, upper-left.The University campus on its knoll, upper-right, and the First Methodist Protestants are building their tower at the southeast corner of Pine and 3rd, ca. 1890. The First Hill horizon is only about 15 years cleared of its old growth forest.Perhaps the last Methodist-Protestant homily at the southeast corner of 3rd and Pine, “What goes up, must come down.” But this early? Circa 1908.The 3-story brick replacement for the church/theatre is nearly completed. In the next lot south the Union Stables are gone and with it the scent of passing street life and old farm life too.

THEN: Louis Rowe’s row of storefronts at the southwest corner of First Ave. (then still named Front Street) and Bell Street appear in both the 1884 Sanborn real estate map and the city’s 1884 birdseye sketch. Most likely this view dates from 1888-89. (Courtesy: Ron Edge)NOW: In 1910 Hotel Grace took the place of the attached storefronts furthest to the south (on the left) on the “Rowe Block.” Soon renamed the Apex Hotel it served the single men who required “cheap digs” in the often-depressed Belltown neighborhood. Later the vacant hotel’s two top floors were made over into a “limited-equity housing coop” named the Apex Belltown Co-op, which first opened in 1984 with the author one of its first residents. Rowe’s two frame buildings nearest the corner – and at it – were still in service well in the nineteen teens. They were replaced with a vacant lot, until the recent addition, front-center in Jean’s repeat.A detail from a 1917 birdseye of the “new retail district” and also of part of Belltown, includes, center-bottom, the southwest corner of First Ave. and Bell Street, showing the unique box-window on hanging at the second window above the sidewalk at the corner.

Pacific’s “now and then” is but one of many such heritage features that have appeared in this paper and others through the years. For instance, The Times first used the subject shown here on Sunday March 14, 1934 for its then popular pictorial series titled “Way Back When.” The photo was submitted by Times reader Mrs. Loretta Wakefield and was but one of ten historical scenes sharing a full page. We assume that the photo captions were also first drafted by those who first entrusted the photographs. And for this each contributor received from The Times the thankful prize of one dollar.

The caption for this subject concentrates on its line up of carriages, teams, pedestrians, employees and clapboard storefronts posing and/or standing on the far southwest corner of First Ave. and Bell Street. It reads, “A buggy show during 1875 – Louis S. Rowe was the manufacturer whose carriage display enticed Seattleites sixty years ago.” Not quite. 1875 was the year that the 40-year old Lewis (not Louis) Solomon Rowe first arrived in Seattle to stay.

The 1888 Sanborn Real Estate map reveals the industry of Rowe with his row at the southwest corner of Bell Street and First Avenue. Behind his commercial corner to the west the map show some topographical lines for the Belltown Ravine aka Gulch. It was an oddity for the Seattle waterfront that is now long since completely filled in. [Courtesy, Ron Edge]Our dear old stock map, the Baist from 1912, shows most of the corner southwest corner of Bell and First still in line with corner built-up by Rowe in the late 1880s. Hotel Grace is distinguished by a unique pink, which may be in part a gift of age. Since the yearly 1984 this hotel’s upper two floors have been home to the Apex Coop.

Rowe’s way with carriages began in 1848 when as the youngest of nine children he left the family farm at the age of fourteen and bound himself for two years to a carriage maker in Bangor Maine. He was paid $30 dollars the first year. By 1861 Rowe was in San Francisco and still employed by a carriage manufacturer. However, by also running the shop and working by the piece he made $60 to $70 a week.

With a some delving Ron Edge found Rowe’s grocery on Front Street (First Ave.), the location supplied for him by Henry Yesler. The structure on the far right horizon is Dr. Roots home and office at the southeast corner of First or Front and Lenora Ave on the western slope of Denny Hill, and so two blocks from Rowe’s next home.

Next – and last – in Seattle Rowe first turned to selling groceries from a shop built for him by Henry Yesler on First Avenue at the foot of Cherry Street. With the cash got from cauliflower and candy sales, Rowe bought land and lots of it, including this southwest corner of First and Bell. Here in the mid 1880s he built his “Rowe’s Block” and soon started both selling and caring for carriages at his corner.

By the evidence of his neighbors – his renters included a drug store; the Watson and Higgens grocery; the Burns Barber Shop; and the Saginaw House, a small hotel – this photo of Rowe’s row was recorded late in 1888 or early in 1889. On March 30, 1889 electric trollies first took the place of horse cars on these tracks running through Belltown to Lower Queen Anne. Trolley wires do not as yet seem to be in evidence.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, Paul? We will begin with a few snapshots taken during the preparation of the Apex Coop in 1983-4 followed by few features from the neighbor as these late hours allow.

My room in the APEX Hotel – how I found it. I have saved some of the wallpaper – the several layers of it, torn as ready-made collage.COOP labor: we saved on our bills by helping bring the old hotel up to snuff fine enough to pass inspection and allow us to move in.

More coop labor. It has been 29 years since I took these snapshot of fellow members doing more trade-out work, and now I discover that the names I knew the last I looked at these negatives – years ago – I no longer remember. I do remember the more abiding qualities like tone of voice, sense of humor, and such.Soon a real Belltown citizen opens her window and looks down in the direction of the First and Bell intersection. The walls are sanded and ready for paint. Soon she will be one of the first APEX Coop residents. Practically every one them was an artist in one or more media. They probably still are, for although choosing the arts can be a fiscal strain, the joy of the work and work-in-play most often makes it worth it. (I’m more than told.)

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Up with Belltown – a map that magnifies the early and overall hopes of the Denny Regrade when it was fresh from digging.

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Has the residence on the left beyond the fill be set at the southwest corner of First and Bell? We collect some evidence below to say it is so, but we have our doubts as well. (Courtesy, Ron Edge)

A QUESTIONABLE CORNER

SEATTLE FROM NORTH SEATTLE, ca. 1884

(First appeared in Pacific, July 4, 1999)

For many years I puzzled over this scene’s foreground. The distant part is familiar. Beacon Hill holds the horizon; below it protrudes the darker forms of what was then the central waterfront. It extends south from Yesler’s Wharf (center) to the King Street coal wharf, which reaches farthest west into Elliott Bay. Two tall ships are tied to either side and another (far right) holds just beyond it.

The boardwalk, homes and fresh excavation are more difficult to place. The Museum of History and Industry print reads “Seattle from vicinity of First and Pine, ca. 1882.” The date is closer to circa 1884. Magnification reveals structures that were not completed until 1883 was itself completed.And this is surely not First and Pine, but more likely five blocks north at First and Bell. The 1884 birds-eye view of the city and the Sanborn real-estate map of the same year show a home at the southwest corner of Bell and Front (First Avenue) with a shape similar to the one here, far left. In both, a small extension is attached to the rear of the house.

A detail from the 1884 birdseye of Seattle gives modest expression to the verdant habitat of the Belltown Ravine. It does not extend the ravine east to First Avenue (which the Ravine on its own did manage to reach). The birdseye also shows the row of structures at the northwest corner of Front (First) and Bell, which, we hope, the artist included to depict the homes showing in the principal subject, above.The same Belltown section of the waterfront as depicted by the artist of Seattle’s 1878 Birdseye, its first.The 1884 Sanborn map – a detail showing the southwest corner of Bell and Front (First) and the Belltown Ravine too, although here its intrusion east of the waterfront is stopped at Western Avenue, when in 1883, at least, it still reach a short way east of First (Front) Avenue.

In September 1884, the territory’s first street railway began its horse-car service as far north as Battery Street (less than a block behind the photographer, if my identification is correct). Although we cannot see the street beyond the boardwalk, far left, we can speculate that the fresh dirt spread across the foreground was placed during the first regrade of First Avenue, undertaken, in part, to give horses an easier grade reaching Belltown.

Topographical maps from as early as the 1870s show a “Belltown Ravine” extending from the waterfront to just beyond First Avenue – hence the bridge, far left (again, if I am correct.) This, then, is evidence of the first fill into a ravine now covered.

Watkin’s 1882 look into Belltown from the western slope of Denny Hill. The southwest corner of First (Front) and Bell, is far left.

Finally, an 1882 view (above) by the visiting Californian Watkins, looks into Belltown from the west side of Denny Hill and shows a fence at the southwest corner of First and Bell that looks (to me with reserve) like the fence running nearly the width of this scene behind the freshly excavated dirt.

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Belltown, circa 1887, looking north across Blanchard and Bell Streets to the towered Bell Hotel at the southeast corner of Front (First Ave.) and Battery Street.

BELLTOWN PAN, ca. 1887 by MUMFORD

(First appears in Pacific, Feb. 27, 1983)

In 1883 the transcontinental Northern Pacific Railroad at last reached Portland and Puget Sound. Seattle, and the rest of the Northwest, had been yearning for this invasion. Arthur Denny and William Bell, two of the Midwestem farmers who years earlier had come to this wilderness to start a city, waited with subdivided real estate for the coming tide of settlers.

Only 32 years after they landed at AIki Point, their city of close to 7,000 residents was the largest In the territory, and their contiguous claims were next in line for serious development. The border between their claims ran diagonally across Denny Hill. A view from the top looked south over Denny’s land toward the center of town. Turning around one looked north toward Belltown. Here, In November 1883, William Bell completed his namesake hotel: a four-story landmark with a showy mansard roof and central tower.

The Bell family home facing Front (First Ave.) from its east side and two lots north of Bell Street.

It was the 66-year-old pioneer’s last promotion. Within the year, Bell’s depressing symptoms of fits and confusion would confine him to his home two doors south of his hotel. There, on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 1887, he died of what then was called “softening of the brain: dementia.Bell’s only son, Austin, then living In California rushed home to his father’s funeral and a Belltown inheritance that appeared much as it does in the above panorama (above the Bell home.). This 1887 (or perhaps 1888) subject looks north from near Second Avenue and Blanchard Street.That’s Blanchard at the lower right. .

William Bell’s hotel is the centerpiece of both this picture and the neighborhood, and his home is the house with the white picket fence and the cheery white smoke streaming to the east from its chimney.

The intersection of Front Street (now First Avenue) and Bell Street is seen with a posing pedestrian standing at its northeast corner, center left. Front Street is lined with a few frontier facades and down its center runs the railway for the horse-drawn trolley, which in 1884 began its somewhat leisurely 17-block service between Battery and Mill (now Yesler Way) Streets.

Belltown was first a forest into which William carved a small clearing for a garden and log cabin. There, Jan. 9, 1854, Austin Americus Bell was born. When the 1856 native attack on Seattle destroyed the first Bell home, William moved the family to California. At David Denny’s urging, he tentatively returned in the early 1860s to subdivide his claim, but not until the early 1870s did William Bell come home to stay.

In 1875 the family moved back to Belltown and into the home with the picket fence. One year later, as a member of the City Council, Bell voted with the majority for Seattle’s first public-works ordinance, which paid for the regrading of Front Street from Mill to Pike Streets. When a boardwalk was added for the additional six blocks out to Belltown, this long and relatively mud-free walk became Seattle’s favorite Sunday and sunset promenade.

For the decade preceding his father’s death, Austin Bell spent most of his time in California. Returning in 1887, he and his wife, Eva moved into their home at Second and Blanchard (Just right and out of frame of our subject.) Now Austin began to act like a promoter, and by 1889 when he moved his offices to 2222 Front St. (Just left of our scene), he had more than doubled his inheritance to an estimated quarter million.

A 1912 look northwest into Belltown from the southern summit of Denny Hill. Both the West Seattle and Magnolia peninsulas show their heads here. (Courtesy, MOHAI) DOUBLE-CLICK to Enlarge.

On the afternoon of April 23 of that year he took a nephew for a buggyride through the streets of Belltown. Stopping on Front Street between his father’s old home and namesake hotel (the Bellevue House), he enthusiastically outlined with dancing hands the five-story heights to which his own planned monumental brick building would soon reach.

That night Austin Bell slept fitfully but arose at 8 o’clock to a “hearty breakfast.'” At 9:30 he walked one block to his office, locked the door and, after writing an endearing but shaky note to his wife, shot himself through the head. He was dead at 35, his father’s age when he first carved a clearing in the forest that would be Belltown.

Among the crowd of hundreds that gathered outside the office was Arthur Denny who recalled for reporters the history of both William and Austin Bell. He indicated that “the symptoms of his father’s disease also had begun to manifest themselves in Austin . . . This he fully recognized himself and the fact played on his mind so that he finally killed himself.”

Eva Bell completed Austin ‘s decorative five-story brick monument and fittingly named and dated it, “Austin A. Bell, 1889.” However, the rebuilding of Seattle’s center after the Great Fire of that year diverted attention from Belltown and Bell’s new building, which even before the 1893 international money crash was popularly called “Bell’s folly.” After this, a series of reversals, including the early-century Denny Hill Regrade, the elections failure of the 1912 Bogue Plan, which included a

proposed new civic center in Belltown, prohibition and the Great Depression all conspired to keep Belltown more or less chronically depressed.

Today the neighborhood is inflating with high-rises all much taller than five stories, but so far none of them quite monumental. However, now one also can choose a window seat in the Belltown Cafe, order an Austin A. Bell Salad and gaze across First Avenue to the depressingly empty but still grandly standing red brick Austin Americus Bell Building.

(Reminder: this was composed 30 years ago.The Austin Americus Bell Building has since been gutted – except for its front façade.A new structure has been built behind it.The Belltown Café folded many years ago, but while it lasted this early and arty attraction was much enjoyed by many.)

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The LEADER BUILDING, Across First Ave. from the Austin Bell Building.

Frank Shaw’s March 13, 1976 record of the Leader Building’s front door. The Leader was built mid-block on the west side of First between Bell and Battery. It was early and made of bricks, which was rare.My own recording of the Leader – by coincidence. I date this ca. 1978. Does it seem later than Shaw’s subject? An old friend named Kathy poses at the door.

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The CAMERON HOTEL

The CAMERON HOTEL by Frank Shaw, on the left, and by myself. The Cameron was on the east side of First mid block between Battery and Wall Streets. Shaw’s subject is predictably dated in his notes, March 13, 1976. Mine is not, although with the windows gone and the door plastered with promotions, my color shot is certainly later, although not very much later. Someone will know how to date the posters, although that is soft-dating at best, for as you know in abandoned buildings like the Cameron pasted post-its can survive for years.Include in this montage of classifieds from Aug. 10, 1973 is an announced public auction for everything in the Cameron Hotel.

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The PRESTON HOTEL

The HOTEL PRESTON, on the right, promises steam heat in this scene from Seattle’s Big Show of 1916 (For more on this the second biggest of our truly big snows see the “snow button” on the blog’s front page). The photographer looks north with her or his back to Virginia Street.My repeat of the snow scene above. Again I did not make dating this easy, although ultimately – by context – I can probably date nearly everything surface I’ve exposed. The Volvo model and its plates in front are inviting too. For now I’m speculating ca. 2000, and the Preston is still up although not a hotel.I found among my negatives two more of the Preston and both photographed by me from the west. For this one I climbed the bank some up from Western Ave. probably to get a better look at the Coke mural on the north facade. With window curtains, these apartments may still be in use. I date it ca. 1978.Here I peek at the Preston and the Westin Hotel too, from Western Ave. I date this ca.1981 largely on the evidence of the Westin work-in-progress. That is its larger northern tower near 5th and Virginia going up. Here the Preston seems vacant.

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PRES. HARDING, JULY 27, 1923, MANITOBA HOTEL, 2124 FIRST AVE.

For reasons I have not searched, Pres. Warren Harding was paraded through Belltown during his brief – and nearly fatal – visit to Seattle on July 27, 1923. He saved the dying for his next stop: San Francisco, a city more deserving of a prexy’s passing. Here while waving his hat, he was still not feeling well. (The not very Secret Service riding beside and along could not save him. Behind him is the Manitobe Apts, a three-story Gothic frame with bay windows at the front that on cold nights – we imagine – might chatter like drunken residents drinking to keep warm. Asahel Curtis took this one – too.This Pacific feature first appears on April, 24, 1994.Earlier that parade day with Harding, Gov. Hart and Mayor Brown.Looking north on the center-line of a quiet First Ave with the Manitoba Apartments on the right, at 2124 First Ave., closer to Blanchard than Lenora. Note the landmark tower of the Austin Bell Building down the way. Rowe’s row is at the center.A Seattle Times clip on Moonshine over Manitoba during the year of Prexy Harding’s pass-by. The clip is dated Oct. 14, 1923.Nearby but later, the Federal Army & Navy Surplus at 2112 First Avenue. Surviving like the Pilot fish, hanging around sharks and the big cargo ships of the Military-Industrial Complex. I bought my rubber boots there.

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LOOKING NORTH From the BACK of the BELL HOTEL ca. 1887

Click Twice to Enlarge

Taken from the back of the Bell Hotel most likely in 1887 or 1888. This pan was wide enough that it required two features in Pacific to include it all. The book version is printed directly below.

Keep CLICKING to Enlarge – to read. Or find the entire book under this blog’s books-button.

The Bell Hotel, at the southeast corner of First Ave. and Battery Street, with the Austin Bell Building beyond it. This photo, by Anders Wilse, dates from circa 1898.Battery Street looking east from First Ave. Although I took this photo I now have no feeling for how long ago Perhaps the autos have their hints and the condo too.What runs beneath Battery revealed.South on First towards Battery. This I manage to date from May 1995. It was taken, I think, when I was help Walt Crowley produce his Historic Trust Guide to Seattle. The next view from 1940 looks thru the same intersection.A subject chosen by the Foster and Kleiser billboard proliferators and signed in code. The caption at the bottom refers to the billboard barely seen here one block south on the east side of First, short of Bell Street. The date is Sept. 24, 1940. This was then still part of “film row.” Note the occupant of the deco business block left-of-center at the forer site of the old Bell Hotel.

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TWO 1926 CLIPPINGS on PUBLIC WORKS DELIBERATIONS that Eventually Led to Both the ALASKAN WAY VIADUCT and the BATTERY STREET TUNNEL

A clip from June 25, 1926. It may be the P-I.From The Seattle Times, June, 27, 1926.Before the widening and long before the viaduct and its tunnel, came the Battery Street conveyor belt which moved the last of Denny Hill to the Battery Street waterfront for dumping – by self-righting barges – into Elliott Bay.

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The PAUPS at the NORTH END of the BLOCK (The Northwest Corner of First and Blanchard)

The PAUPS of BELLTOWN

(First appeared in Pacific, Jan. 25, 1987.It also appears as Feature No. 35, in Seattle Now and Then Vol. 3, which can be opened on this blog – with some searching of the front page.)

There is a remarkable continuity to the northwest comer of First and Blanchard street. Martin Paup bought it in the late 1880 & when Belltown was still part of North Seattle and Martin Paup still owns it today_

Some of the character of this comer has also held. Until it closed three years ago [in 1987] the Queen City Tavern was, according to the contemporary Martin Paup, the longest continuously operating union bar in the city. Consequently, that watering hole shows up in the older view as does the historical Martin Paup posing with his wife Ellen and their three children to the right of the sign reading “General Store.” Paup is the one with the mustache, but without the hat. By the time this Martin Paup died here in 1938 he’d become a cherished pioneer. Born in 1846 to poverty and as a child indentured by his parents to an abusive farmer, he eventually escaped to the Civil War as a boy cavalryman for the Union side. Years later, as old as 86, he marched the entire route in local parades as color bearer for the remaining Civil War veterans.

The still young Paup came west after the war and soon settled on Bainbridge Island, working for many years as an engineer for the Port Blakely Mill Company on the famous pioneer steamer Politofsky. Married in 1877, Ellen and Martin began to raise a family and save their money, investing it in real estate and rental homes mostly in Belltown.

Interviewed by the Post-Intelligencer in 1888, Paup explained, “A number of years ago 1 came to the conclusion that Seattle would someday become a great city. 1 talked the matter over with my wife and we both agreed to live as economically as possible and lay by a few dollars every month to put into property. It does not take any shrewdness to get ahead in this county, barring sickness. All that is necessary is to layout a plan and then follow it . . .1 think about five years more of hard work will let me out of steam-boating and 1 will come to Seattle and settle down.”

Posing with a book on the front porch of the Paup home at the southwest corner of Western Ave. and Blanchard Street.

And so he did, moving with his family to Belltown in 1895 to a home at Western Avenue and Blanchard Street, one block west of where Ellen and he soon built this two-story commercial building with the tavern, a general store, bakery and modest hotel upstairs for “traveling men” (two of whom may be posing on the roof).

Scanned from the Times clipping, the corner now, or rather in 1987.

When this short-lived clapboard was razed in 1910 for the brick property in the “now,” [1987] its basic commercial uses as a bar downstairs and a hotel upstairs were retained. And in this there is yet another continuity, for the contemporary Martin Paup (grandson of the Civil War veteran) has, with the help of the city, renovated the old Lewiston Hotel to retain its service to low-and-fixed-income tenants. The average rent for the Lewiston’s 48 units is only $113 a month [1987]. When this good work was done in 1980 it was the nation’s first federally-supported SRO (Single Room Occupancy) project. Today the Lewiston is managed for Paup by the nonprofit Plymouth Housing, an agency of Plymouth Congregational Church, an institution with a long record of inner-city social activism.

In 1987 the comer regained its Queen City name when Peter Lamb, owner of the Pike Place Market’s popular II Bistro restaurant, opened the Queen City Grill here, next door to the Frontier restaurant and cocktail lounge.

In our last Sunday feature I shared with Berangere and Jean the hope that some reader would respond with explanations for the largely mysterious – for us – submarines that we included there. We were blessed with just such from Bill Hoeller. Now we will print out his explanations beneath the subs they apply to. And we will introduce this with the introduction to his first letter to us. Thanks much Bill.

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Dear Paul,

Having been born and raised in Seattle I always look forward to your Seattle Now & Then feature every Sunday. In 1940 when I was born I lived in the Rainier Valley. My wife and I currently live in Wallingford. I saw you had some questions concerning submarines, which I know a little about, so I thought I would respond. I’m also anxious to see additional posts about submarines.

All the best,

Bill Hoeller

This submarine is the H-Class submarine H-1 (SS-28). She was commissioned as the Seawolf, but was renamed the H-1. The H-3, built here at the Moran shipyard, was named the Garfish (SS-30).I’m still trying to find the name of this submarine. She’s a Balao or Tench class submarine that underwent a Guppy conversion. The shark fin looking thing up near the bow and just aft of the sail are two of the three sonar arrays for the PUFFS passive underwater fire control BQG-4 system that would give the range and bearing of a target. The third array would be well aft on the submarine. The high sail was added to the original configuration of the boat to provide more protection for those on the bridge from heavy seas, and was referred to as a North Atlantic Sail. These sails were also made partially of plastics to reduce weight and reduce corrosion. The boat may very well have been a foreign submarine when this photo was taken, one of the many Guppy boats we gave away. LATER . . . Thank you very much for asking Paul. You’re more than welcome to quote me.

Regarding the mystery boat moored across from the Continental Can Company, I belong to the United State Submarine Veterans, Inc. (USSVI) so I asked a friend of mine, Patrick Householder, who lives here and who once was the National Commander of the organization. The USSVI has over 13, 000 members, so the pool of knowledge within the group about U.S. submarines is infinite. Patrick knows more than most about U.S. diesel submarines.

Patrick said the boat was either the USS Salmon (SS-573) or the USS Sailfish (SS-572), and now that he said it I agree. Since the Salmon was a west coast boat and the Sailfish was an east coast boat, the boat in the picture is the undoubtedly the Salmon. I should have thought of Salmon because she was in our flotilla in San Diego when I was on Sea Devil (SS-400).

Salmon and Sailfish were purpose built as radar picket boats and both were 350’ long, which at the time was huge. The standard Gato, Balao and Tench class fleet submarines at the time were 312’ long. The boats carried a huge radar antenna on deck aft of the sail, and another huge antenna on top of the sail when they operated as picket boats, but when they were re-classified as regular diesel attack submarines their huge radar antennas were removed. [Here I asked Bill Hoeller to explain the meaning of “picket boats” in his passage above. His answer follows.] Don’t hold my feet to the fire on this, but the term “picket” would be likened to a picket fence around a house to act as a barrier to keep dogs in the yard (or perhaps outside the yard.) During the battle for Okinawa destroyers formed a picket barrier away from the main battle fleet to give early warning of Japanese aircraft Kamikaze attacks, and although the destroyers performed their job well many of them naturally became targets of the Kamikaze and many were sunk. The notion came up that perhaps a submarine could better do the job by submerging before the aircraft attacked, but nothing was done until shortly after the war. Perhaps eight or so conventional fleet diesel submarines were configured with huge search radars that allowed them to determine the range, distance and altitude of an aircraft. Here on the west coast I remember there were the Spinax, the Rock, the Raton and the Rasher. The Salmon and the Sailfish were purpose built as radar picket boats, as was the nuclear powered submarine USS Triton (SSRN-586). She was the boat that sailed around the world submerged. The whole program of using submarines as radar picket boats didn’t last long, perhaps for a year or a bit longer. Radars on long range aircraft performed the job much better.Here’s a photo of Salmon in San Francisco Bay that I found on the Internet. I think it’s rather cool.These two boats are the Bass (SS-164) and the Bonita (SS165). They were V-Class boats.Here’s the Bass again. Inboard of the Bass is probably the Barracuda (SS-163). The outboard boat is the Dolphin (SS-169). When she operated out of the old Coco Solo submarine base in Panama she was the D-1. Like the Bass and Barracuda the Dolphin was a V-Class boat.Below as you know is the USS Carp (SS-338). She was a Balao class boat, commissioned in February 1945, and made one war patrol before the war ended. She was sold for scrap in 1973.The USS Puffer (SS-268), a Gato class submarine, had a stellar career in WWII. She sustained one of the longest depth charging of any submarine, over 31 hours. She was submerged for 38 hours before coming back to the surface.Puffer holds a special place for me. I enlisted in the Navy aboard her in 1957 when she was the training boat for Submarine Reserve Division 13-16 here in Seattle at the Naval Armory. I spent a lot of time aboard her, and spent a lot of time marching around inside the Armory.You mentioned you lived for a time in a houseboat along Fairview, and told the story of the Puffer going adrift. When I was fourteen I worked for a commercial diver as his tender. He had a moorage for his diving barge at the north end of Lake Union, just east of the Gas Works. He managed to corral a lot of galvanized barrels. We filled the barrels with water, placed them under houseboats between the cedar logs upon which the houses were built, and blew the water out using compressed air, which helped to raise the houseboat up a bit. The cedar logs over the years would become waterlogged and slowly sink. We worked on houseboats all around Lake Union and Portage Bay.

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HOPEFULLY – if we can find it – we intend to return to this SUBMARINE SECTION of our blog with something on THE PRINCESS ANGELINE, the “first atomic submarine built for Puget Sound commuter service.” We doubt that it was ever built.Were we not quoting we would have preferred to write “planned for Puget Sound commuter service.” Please check for it later.

Since the beginning of the year 2013, Marseille became the European capital of culture. Six millions of visitors came to see the new museum MuCEM (Museum for Europe and Mediterranean) and enjoy the exhibitions, concerts taking place throughout the year.

First French cruise port, Marseille is also a melting pot.

At three hours from Paris by train, Marseille has become one of the favourite destination to find the sun, the sea, creeks : gate of the Mediterranean, it is the crossroads of cultures, of the art of living in the sun.

New architectures, including Mucem Rudy Ricciotti and Norman Foster ‘s shelter give a new spirit to the old city.

Here is the old port of Marseille, with the emblematic basilica “Notre Dame de la Garde”at the top of the hill

In old Port, Dali’s sculpture and on the right Norman Foster ‘s shelter

At the entrance of the old port, the MuCEM

The architect defines its creation as a “vertical casbah, a perfect square of 72 meters on each side, run by tree structures slender Protected by shading as a latticework. Mineral, while fiber-reinforced concrete, dust matt this is an architecture of thinness, stretched as tight muscles of a runner, armed with a powerful and feminine delicacy. it refers to the metaphor of the Mediterranean. ”

THEN: The new sub H-3 takes her inaugural baptism at the Seattle Construction and Dry Dock Company’s ways on Independence Day, 1913. (Courtesy, Ron Edge)NOW: Here, Jean Sherrard describes the stimulating path he took to record his repeat. “On an overcast Saturday I turned off of First Avenue South, heading west toward the docks. Nothing remains of Alaskan Way, plowed under in preparation for the big tunnel dig, so I followed unmarked access roads and wound up in a parking lot separated from the docks by a barbed wire fence and a security hutch. I explained to the guard on duty that I was taking a repeat of a submarine launch from almost exactly a hundred years ago. Unimpressed, she informed me that I needed to apply for permission from her superiors, but they wouldn’t be available until Monday at nine A.M. I asked her for their names and contact information, and when she turned back to her desk, I shot my photo.”

At 5 o-clock on the afternoon of July 4, 1913, Miss Helen McEwan, the daughter of a proud and watching VIP, christened the bow of the H-3, then the Navy’s “new under water fighting machine.” The Times sensitive reporter saw it “slide gracefully into the waters of Elliot Bay.”

In the next day’s Times a hopeful editor added, “May the new vessel sink as successfully as she floats!” And the H-3 did both sink and swim but not always in order. For instance, in Dec. 1916 with three other navy vessels examining coastwise harbors, the H-3 – in a fog – ran on a sand spit at Humboldt Bay in Northern California. A year earlier in Southern California waters while “forging ahead” of another navy flotilla this time heading up the coast from San Diego for an Independence Day celebration in San Francisco, the H-3 ran on the rocks at Point Sur. First saved by a high tide and then patched at the navy year in Vallejo, on leaving the navy yard the sub managed to first graze the cruiser Cleveland and then run afoul of a dike at the Vallejo lighthouse. In 1930 the H-3 was, perhaps, mercifully decommissioned.

Two more vessels half hide here behind the H-3. Built in Ballard in 1902, the four-mast schooner Willis A Holden is held for overhaul in one of the Seattle Construction and Drydock Company’s three floating dry-docks after a punishing 63-day sail north from Iquique Chile.

Half hidden behind the flags on the sub and with its stern nearly touching the schooner, we may glimpse the sporty steam tug, the Tempest. Perhaps she waits to nudge the submarine if needed. As described in the McCurdy Maritime History of the Pacific Northwest, the tug’s productive last years in warmer waters were a gift of the Great Depression and a bottle of spirits. With the 65-foot-long tug in debt and under guard, its captain “provided a bottle for the Tempest’s watchman.” Then slipping the tug “quietly from her moorings and out to sea” she was seen “heading south down the coast under a full head of steam.” The Tempest reached San Blas, Mexico safely and ended her days as a shrimp trawler.”

Reviewing the these maritime stories, Ron Edge, who provided the historical photograph, is of the opinion that the lives of vessels may sometimes be of greater interest than our own. In the “now” caption, Jean Sherrard describes the contemporary task required to record his repeat.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, Paul?

Acting under the inhibitions of the little time left now before “nighty-bears” I will plop into the feature a few related features, and then with what is left add an addendum later in the week.

First the two tips that Ron Edge sent us on what he figured was the target for your “now” or “repeat” of the 1913 sub shot. One is an early 20th Century Sanborn real estate map and the other a detail pulled from a recent Google-earth shot from space. In both instances Ron has circled the environs with a red circle.

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NEXT, and in order, we will illustrate a few activities that have held the waterfront at or near the Sub’s launch site, and starting with a subject that looks east ca. 1885 to the ridge that before the Jackson Street Regrade (1907-09) and the Dearborn Cut (1909-1912) ran between First and Beacon Hills. The closest railroad trestles crossing the tideflats are constructions of the 1880s. The The knoll above the red arrow near the horizon right-of-center was removed in the early part of 20th Century for fill for the laying of tracks free of worm-endangered wooden trestles like those showing here. Dearborn Street crossed the knoll.

MORITZ THOMSEN’S CENTENNIAL MILL

CENTENNIAL MILL

[Click TWICE to enlarge for reading]

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MORAN’S SHIPYARD

Looking east – again – through some of the Moran Bros. Shipyard, the ridge between First and Beacon Hill’s can be spied. Far right is a developing Beacon Hill neighborhood. The date is ca. 1903. The image comes from Hal Will. He would know the date. But Hal passed away about 5 years ago – by now. The picture is used courtesy of Hal.Looking north along the outer water edge of the Moran shipyard, ca. 1903. The Denny aka Washington Hotel on the summit of Denny Hill holds the horizon, far left. The ships showing here are named in Moran’s own caption, bottom-right. Again, used courtesy of Hal Will.Robert Moran at his desk. Courtesy: Hal WillA Moran Shipyard lockout of labor in 1903 with the one-time Seattle mayor standing beside his sign.Two of Robert Moran and his shipyard’s most valiant efforts: the construction of 12 Yukon River Steamers in 1898 for the gold rush and the 1904 launching of the Battleship Nebraska for the post-Spanish-American War mobilization – which continues.

The Skinner and Eddie shipyard used the old Moran yard site during World War One to construct a volume of ships that Moran could have only imagined. Following the war the waterfront strike – seen here – soon turned into Seattle’s celebrate General Strike of 1919: a momentary thrill for local labor.

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HOOVERVILLE IGNITION

This is most likely the most oft-published panorama of Seattle’s own Hooverville on the abandoned and cleared site of the Skinner and Eddy shipyard. It was photographed here from the roof of the B.F. Goodrich Rubber Company building at the southwest corner of what were then Connecticut Street and Railroad Avenue and are today Royal Brougham and East Marginal Ways. The year is mid-depression: mid-1930s. Here we see a little more than half of the 500 shanties that live-in sociologist Donald Francis Roy described as “scattered over the terrain in insane disorder . . . in this labyrinth the investigator wandered for days, pacing off length and widths and distances from this to that and achieved, after a great sacrifice of leather, a fairly accurate map.For comparison another look at Hooverville from the roof of the rubber products company. This one is dated June 10, 1937. (Courtesy Municipal Archive)Hooverville spied in the distance from First Hill. The Goodrich Rubber building can be found almost touched by the top of the Great North Union Depot tower.A resident in one of the earlier homes built on the Hooverville site. This one dates from October 27, 1931. On any day newspapers were a clean cover for a home with no easy way to wash-up surfaces. In cold weather several newspapers were also used as blankets. (Now visit your own bedroom and give thanks for the blankets and other bedding you find there. There but for the . . .)

HOOVERVILLE BURN – 1940

(First appeared in Pacific,Feb. 23, 1997)

First in the fall of 1940 at “Hooverville” and other shack communities spread along the beaches and tideflats of Elliott Bay were a squatter’s Armageddon. The residents got a posted warning.The mostly single men who lived in these well-packed, rent-free communities were told the day of the coming conflagration, so there was time for a few to arrange for the shacks to be carefully trucked away to other sites not market for wartime manufacturing.

This was very different from the old Hooverville ritual of farewell – a kind of potlatch.When a resident found a job (a rare event), he was expected to ceremoniously give his house, bed and stove to others still out of work.In 1939 this gift-giving became a commonplace; the war in Europe had begun to create jobs here, and among the residents of Hooverville were many skill hands.

Squatters’ shacks had been common in Seattle since at least the economic Panic of 1893.Miles of waterfront were dappled with minimal houses constructed mostly of whatever building materials the tides or junk heaps of nearby industries offered.For the most part, these free-landers were not bothered by officials or their more conventional neighbors.Swelling during the 1930s to communities of more than 1,000 residents, these self-policing enclaves were an obvious and creative solution to some of the worst effects of the Great Depression.

Hooverville was the biggest of them all.It sprawled along the waterfront west of East Marginal Way, roughly between Dearborn Street and Royal Brougham Way.The scene of prodigious shipbuilding during World War 1, the site had been increasingly neglected and then abandoned after the war.In 1997 when this feature was first published these acres were crowed with Port of Seattle containers.Since then the size of this service has diminished.Among the visions of what might become of this container field are residential uses: condos – perhaps stacked something like containers beside the bay and near to downtown.

The south central waterfront viewed south from the Smith Tower on July 5, 1962. The preps for the Port’s container field are underway near the foot of Dearborn Street. The photo was captures by Robert Schneider and is used compliments of him.Lawton Gowey record of much of the same south-central waterfront and also from the Smith Tower. The date is April 15, 1976 and the container field is progressing. With more cranes and containers, Harbor Island is at the scene’s center across the east waterway of the Duwamish.Lawton Gowey – again – looks south from the Exchange Building to the developed container field with cranes south of Pier 48.

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SUBMARINES IN NEED OF HELP

Berangere and Jean, perhaps one of another of our readers will give us some help in identifying the submarines below. They were plucked from our archive.

A sub in Elliott Bay dated from ca. 1910. The year was tentatively chosen because the subject is part of a collection that generally dates from then. The photographer was not revealed.Robert Shaw’s mid-1970 look over a unidentified sub to the American Can Co building at the north end of the Central Waterfront.Two subs on the south waterfront near Harbor Island. One of them is the BASS.The gregarious BASS again, this time to the left and with a different companion.The caption from an unidentified source reads, “Sub Carp and ferry in Elliott Bay 1945.”NOT SUBS but their chasers at port in Everett.

Naval sub No. 268, above, lying along the water end of the Naval Armory at the south end of Lake Union. The Armory, you know, was recently converted into a new home for the Museum of History and Industry. In the mid-1960s I lived for a time in one of the homes in the rows of house boats that held to the shore. My architect friend Bob lived at the far (western) end of one row of those floating homes along Fairview Ave. and at the very southern end of the house boat community. His then was the last (most westerly) floating home on the last (most southerly) dock which was still more than half a mile northwest of the armory. One morning he was awakened by a sturdy bump at his bedroom window. Sitting up in bed Bob discovered the cause. The submarine normally tied to the end of the armory had broken loose in that night’s storm and drifted across the lake in the dark in order to, it seemed, firmly but gently nudge Bob awake. Bob said that it was “startling but not upsetting.” So Bob went back to sleep expecting that once the navy determined that its missing submarine was not resting on the bottom would easily find it in the morning at his bedroom window, waiting there for a tow back to the armory.

THEN: While visiting Seattle for some promoting, silent film star Wallace Reid shares the sidewalk at 4th and Olive with a borrowed Stutz Bearcat. (Courtesy, Museum of History & Industry)NOW: The Mayflower Hotel, rising here behind the stagecoach, opened in the summer of 1927. Across Olive Way, on the left, the stately Times Building was completed in 1916 and thankfully survives.

Here relaxes star Wallace Reid, “the silent screen’s most perfect lover,” in a Stutz Bearcat. The racer was borrowed – with promotional considerations – out of Jim Parson’s Stutz showroom on Broadway Ave., which with Pike Street was Seattle’s “auto row” then. We learned the date of this subject, when we found a captioned second record of the sporty car and handsome ham posing together here on the sidewalk at the pointed western end of The Times Building at 4th and Olive Way. It appeared in The Times on July 20, 1919. Reid is described there as “a Stutz admirer and a lover of automobiles.”

The editorial photo of actor Reid and his borrowed Stutz chosen by Times editors was not the one featured above, but rather the portrait of both printed at the bottom of this page from the July 20, 1919 Seattle Times.

The source for Reid’s borrowed Stutz, Jimmy Parsons, both a Stutz racer and dealer.

For his “now” Jean Sherrard considered asking the driver of the Seafair stage coach heading south on Fourth Avenue to pull on to the sidewalk and pause there for a pose, but the moving pressures of this year’s torchlight parade convinced Jean to record his “repeat” from afar – across Fourth. It is also a prospect that shows more of the architectural splendor of the Beau Arts Times Building, which was home for this newspaper from 1916, when the flatiron structure was built, until 1930 when the paper moved north a few blocks to its present plant in the Cascade neighborhood.

The Times building when nearly new. The flat-iron terra-cotta beauty is embraced by 5th Avenue to the east and Stewart and Olive, respectively to the north and south. Across Olive, far right, the Waverly Hotel is still in place.

Born in 1891 into a show business family – his dad was a playwright-actor – Wallace Reid was still in his teens when he appeared in his first film. Here in 1919 he began playing the racer-hero in a string of sports car dramas including the Roaring Road (1919), Double Speed (1920), Excuse my Dust (1920) and Too Much Speed. (1921). Roaring Road was released a few weeks before Reid and the borrowed Bearcat took this pose. In its promotional pulp, Reid is described as pursuing actress Dorothy Ward “with the same energy he applied to his other obsession in life, auto racing.” (For your invigoration Roaring Road – all of it! – can be watched on YouTube.)

Long-time “real photo postcard” artist Ellis looks east at the Times Square Building’s split between Stewart on the left and Olive on the right. Far right is the Mayflower Hotel. One may estimate the age of the undated photo with clues from its cars.

Also in 1919 while doing his own stunt work for the production of The Valley of the Giants, in Southern Oregon, Reid was seriously injured. So that the filming could continue, the star was prescribed morphine for the pain. By the time of the film’s release on August 31, Reid had developed an addiction. While attempting recovery he died of pneumonia – and perhaps a failed heart as well – in a California sanitarium, on Jan. 18, 1923. He was 31 and left his wife, two children, and many films.

WEB EXTRAS

I have a few Seafair snaps I’ll drop in to provide extra spice.

Acting chief of police Jim Pugel with a model of a beloved hydroplane in his lap. According to brother Mike, Jim intended to tow the hydro behind him, but ran into technical difficultiesSeattle police motorcycle drill teamSikhs near the CineramaLittle Saigon on parade

Anything to add, Paul? Only a sample of nearby subjects, including more parading, beginning with a Potlatch Parade scene from 1911, taken from the same corner, with the Waverly Hotel still in place and the Times offices still at the northeast corner of Second and Union.

Looking east on Olive from Fourth Avenue during a 1911 Potlatch parade. The Waverly Hotel is on the right – future home of the Mayflower Hotel. The float is promoting rugs. Next below is the same block on Olive in 1956.Looking east on Olive from 4th Avenue in 1956. The Mayflower Hotel is on the right and the Times Building on the left. By this time the newspaper had long since moved from this its 1916 plant to its 1930 plant on Fairview Ave. in the Cascade neighborhood, which is still the newspaper’s home.Looking west on Stewart from an upper floor of the Times’ Building. You may loosely hang a date – or nail it – from the automobiles and more.The flat-iron Times Building seen from an upper floor of the Securities Building at 3d and Stewart. The Mayflower Hotel is on the right, behind it the Medical Dental Building with Capitol Hill on the horizon.The Mayflower Hotel was first built fast and introduced as the Bergonian Hotel in 1927. This nearly full-page age was clipped from The Seattle Times for July 15,1927.Roughly the same prospect as that immediately above. This one, of course, is earlier, and recorded from a new Washington Hotel (Josephinum) at the northeast corner of Stewart and 2nd Ave. This the southeast corner of Denny Hill has been graded and the triangular lot that will be home a few years hence for the Times is cleared. The Waverly Hotel is at the bottom-right corner.Two early looks thru the neighborhood east from Denny Hill when it was still 110 feet above its present elevation on Third Avenue between Stewart and Virginia. The Seattle Electric car barns and power houses with tall black stacks are evident in both views. The first home for a St.Mark Episcopal – sans tower – appears with the parsonage at the bottom of the top photo, in the flat-iron block between 4th, 5th, Olive (on the right) and Stewart on the left. The steeple tops a different sanctuary, the First Swedish Baptist Church. The Pike Street dip between Capitol Hill, on the left, and First Hill, on the right, is evident on the horizon – here at its center. Graded and raised with timber supports, Terry Avenue descends one of the steeper parts of First Hill, right of center.Looking west and back at the featured block with 5th Ave. at the bottom and the Hotel Mayflower across Olive Street from the Times Building. The sectioned fire escape holding to the hotel’s east facade looks very much like the Universal Worm.You have may have seen it before, and may see it again, the Universal Work aka Tiger’s Tale, a loving inflation by Northwest Artist John Hillding, ca. 1971.Another and nearby inflatable aka Soft Sculpture from the 1955 Christmas Parade. (Thanks to Ron Edge and his holiday’s collection)The Santa Claus Parade moves south, it seems, on 4th Avenue, with a tired big elf – perhaps – resting in front of the Times Building.A few blocks east on Olive below the Music Hall’s marque showing M.G.M.s Van Johnson vehicle, Battle Ground during its winter run here in 1950. Puget Sound Power’s headquarters at the southwest corner of Olive and 7th have corporate continuity with the Seattle Electric facilities shown above. [You will find a description of the 1950 nearly Big Snow in Seattle Snows, Part Six. It can be found on the front page of this blog – as a button.One of Seattle’s hypertension centers for red meat delights, El Goucho Restaurant at 7th and Olive, ca. 1960. Imagine the abs!A more traditional parade heading south on 4th and entering its intersection with Pine Street on May 30, 1953. Both the Mayflower and the Times Bldg. appear left of center, and the sports gear store for Ben Paris, another once-upon-a-time very popular center for sportsman and beef-eaters, is right-of-center. (Courtesy again of Ron Edge)Looking north thru the same block on Nov. 29, 1927.

CLOSING WITH our featured flat-iron block in the 1890s looking northwest and thru it from the intersection of Olive and 5th Avenue. St. Marks Church has been rented to a printing company, which by now it seems has abandoned the place. The sign on the corner indicates that it is to be “Sold at Auction,” or perhaps it has been recently sold. Denny Hotel holds the summit of Denny Hill. (That is the lesser summit straddling 3rd Ave – if it was there – between Virginia and Pine Streets. This front/south summit was about five feet lower than the north or greater summit between Lenora and Blanchard and mid-block between 3rd and 4th Avenues.)

We were not very good about getting every issue of Helix properly noted for its number and date. This was the first issue printed after the first (of 3) Sky River Rock Festivals gathered together over Labor Day. So this is from 1968. Without any confidence in the internal evidence of this tabloid itself, we have dated it above “early September, 1968. It occurs to me that this negligence or uncertainly is, in part or from one prospect, a sign that we were then living in eternity. (This week – for the next Helix and hopefully within a week or two – we will look for other photos taken at the first Sky River. An google search will certainly show others.)